Choose Your Path. It is four thousand years before the Galactic Empire and hundreds of Jedi Knights have fallen in battle against the ruthless Sith. You are the last hope of the Jedi Order. Can you master the awesome power of the Force on your quest to save the Republic? Or will you fall to the lure of the dark side?

Recommended By Curators

"A great RPG made by Bioware prior to Mass Effect this game is what inspired them to make the Mass Effects games to allow more creative liberty."

About This Game

Choose Your Path.
It is four thousand years before the Galactic Empire and hundreds of Jedi Knights have fallen in battle against the ruthless Sith. You are the last hope of the Jedi Order. Can you master the awesome power of the Force on your quest to save the Republic? Or will you fall to the lure of the dark side? Hero or villain, saviour or conqueror... you alone will determine the destiny of the entire galaxy!

A war rages between The Republic and The Sith. ‘Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic’ throws you head first into a fantastic recreation of the Star Wars universe filled with lightsabers, Sith Lords, and political intrigue, in an immersive, gripping tale of Good vs. Evil which - more than a decade on - stands tall as one of the best RPG’s of its generation, and probably the finest gaming interpretation of the iconic Star Wars franchise.

Campaign: Released in 2003 by Bioware | Lucas Arts, and set 4000 years before the events in ‘Star War’s - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace’, ‘SW:KOTOR’ tells the tale of a relative unknown caught up in events of cosmic proportions. The opening credits thrust you into the midst of an inter-galactic battle between Republic forces and a Dark Sith Lord, which finds you crash landing onto an alien planet, trying to stay alive and escape an inter-planetary Sith blockade. An unusually strong connection with the Force catapults the player from by-stander to protagonist, as an engaging, story-fueled campaign takes you across the galaxy from the mysterious water-world of Manaan, to the desert planet of Tatooine among many others. A lovingly crafted universe is filled with lots of recognizable faces to include – the treacherous Hutt’s, Bounty Hunter’s, Sith, Jedi Knights, Wookies, Protocol Droids, Rancor’s, and Sand People - amongst a broader cast of nearly 300 distinctive alien races.

Gameplay | Graphics | Sound: A Third-Person RPG in the classic mold, gameplay in ‘SW:KOTOR’ is built around the 4 pillars of ‘Character Development and Customization’, ‘Inventory Management’, ‘Combat’, and ‘Dialogue-driven Story-Telling’. You choose to play as one of three character classes (Soldier, Scout or Scoundrel – with both male and female options available), and then as one of three Jedi sub-classes (Sentinel, Consular or Guardian). A deep inventory system allows you to customize and equip your character with a multitude of clothing, weapon and armor options as well as assign XP to level-up in a variety of areas from Attributes, Skills, Feats, and Force Powers. Combat is based around the ‘D20’ RPG rule-set popularized in ‘Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)’, and while round-based, players are able to queue up actions and run them simultaneously in real-time. Finally, Character interaction is via a dialogue menu that is rumored to contain over 2000 lines of text, clearly geared toward maximizing player choice across multiple playthrough’s. While the broad strokes are seemingly representative of standard RPG fare, three elements serve to distinguish this title from the rank and file – 1. The ability to switch to | customize | play as any character in your group provides for great overall variety 2. The campaign is well-paced with ‘Third Person’ gameplay broken up by ‘Rail-shooting’, ‘Stealth’, ‘Racing’, and ‘Gambling’ mini-games and 3. Deep customization options, lots of side-quests and the sheer glee of roaming the Star Wars universe adds great replayability to this title. Sound Design is also particularly noteworthy, with voice-acting, sound effects and background score composition all top-shelf. Well optimized K&M controls round out a well polished title.

Flaws: There is little to gripe about here, and perhaps the game’s biggest ‘flaw’ is its dated graphics - which have not aged particularly well - but it’s a testament to the overall strength of this title that it remains not only playable, but immensely engaging, despite this. Other minor issues include somewhat repetitive combat, and some minor character pathfinding issues.

Overall, ‘Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic’ is an erstwhile classic from another time, rich in Star Wars lore, with a deep, engaging campaign, a fantastic background score, compelling combat mechanics, high replayability and filled with iconic characters, plot twists, and moral complexities. This is a title you could easily lose yourself in for 50-60 hours on a single-playthrough, and that’s even before player-choice dictates your ultimate path to the Light or Dark Side. The Force is all around you, Padawan. What is your Destiny? – Highly Recommended! – (Rating 9/10)

If you like:-The Dragon Age series-The Mass Effect series-The Star Wars universe & lore-A battle system similar to the one used in Final Fantasy 12 (Queueing actions + turn based in real time)-A good balance between gameplay and story

If you don't mind:-Old, dated graphics -Having to configure & mod the game in order to play on modern PCs

-Quick Review-Knights of the Old Republic (Also known as: KOTOR) is an RPG that BioWare developed in 2003. KOTOR implements conversational dialogue where choices are made between different interactions the main character can make various ethical decisions, solve puzzles, provoke, chastise, forgive, extort, and more.

-Detailed breakdown review-Story: You are a crew member of a republic ship named the "Endar Spire", after creating your character you awaken to find that your ship is under siege from the Sith forces, you need to use your class-specific-skills to slice, pew, or sneak your way past the Sith troops.As you progress through the game there are probably HUNDREDS of sub-stories that you encounter, including 9 different characters with their own unique back stories. When it comes to story time, few do it as well as KOTOR.For my fellow Star Wars Junkies, this game takes places during the "Old Republic" era, not long after the Sith wars (or Jedi Civil War). The lore on this game is very good, you get to visit Kashyyk, Korriban, Tatooine, Yavin, Manaan, Dantooine, and a few more KOTOR specific planets.

Game Play: This is the part where I stop praising the wonderful lore and story of the game... I have been replaying this game on steam, I had actually spend many hundreds of hours on this game when I was a kid... I had forgotten that the game is rather buggy, and your character gets stuck often.There are ways to get around the flaws (teleport back to your ship, or switch characters and run as someone else), but the inconvenience is VERY obnoxious. Others may not encounter these problems, but my point is the game hasn't aged very well at all.Bug's aside, the auto level up feature in the game is definitely suggested for beginners, however I was an idiot when I first played this game and would create characters who had skills they had no business in specking into. (For example; a soldier with high intelligence and focused on the persuasion skill)The Game play really doesn't get rolling until after you've escaped the Endar Spire and Taris, then you get to chose between having Jedi, Droids, or range fighters by your side. The strategies in the game really start to shine once you get into situations you cannot win with default combat alone. (For example; trying to get off Taris without leveling up the main character... I had to heavily rely on grenades) Something should be said for the detail and complexity of the combat system in the KOTOR series, if you don't want to learn how it works, just auto level up and you should be able to get through the story. (However, there are parts and fights that will elude you unless you get creative.)

Achievements: There are no Steam achievements for KOTOR, that doesn't mean there is no challenge or difficulty... Someday I'll need to try to speed run and/or try to see if I can beat it without my whole party wiping (game over).

Price: Knights of the Old Republic is priced at $9.99 that's a pretty fair price for most RPG's. Since this game is rather old, I would recommend waiting for a 50-75% off sale, I got my copy from a Humble Bundle. (Humble bundle was like "Heyyyy Atratzuuuuu, GiveUsYourMoney!" and I exclaimed "No! I'm trying to pay back college loans!" And Humble bundle retorted with "It's a Star Wars Bundle." And then I threw my wallet at my monitor...)

Conclusion: I cannot speak for everyone, but this has always been one of my most favorite Star Wars games, even with the various bugs while running the game, I still intend to play through the game at least once via steam.The game should easily take about 25-40 hours... depends on how easily you're side tracked... if you're a completionist like me you'll probably be looking closer to 50 hours, and then if you want to replay to help/screw the NPC's you screwed/helped, you can easily double your time spent.

Let's put it in a simple pro's vs con's list:Cons: graphics are old, characters get stuck, not much aesthetic customization, combat is more complicated than it needs to be, cheap tactics to get you to replay the game, screen resolution limitations, and lastly Bastila Shan and Carth Onasi as main characters.Pros: HK-47 and Jolee Bindo... Trust me - they're awesome. Good story telling, skills/talents/stats are highly customizable, multiple endings and multiple endings to sub-stories, props for all the voice recording required for this game, and the appearance of familiar star wars themes/planets/factions.

------Edits and updates------Edit/Update May 20, 2015:I recently turned on V-Sync in my graphic settings, and that has removed all "getting stuck" after combat and interactions. Which has already improved the game 100% (it's a pain switching characters, or saving and reloading to move again).